Where are they now? Catching up with your favorite children’s book protagonists.
You loved them first at the library. There, they bewitched you with their preternatural gumption, and vulnerability. Their zany ideas and wicked wit. They were your first best friends. But then you lost touch. Life got in the way. And it didn’t help that you existed in fully separate dimension dimensions. One in space, and one on paper.
But today—lucky you!—the mystery ends. Thanks to a whimsical cosmic connection, I’ve been able to get in touch with some of our pals from the children’s section. Here’s what everyone’s been doing in the years since we last met.
Bud “Not Buddy” Caldwell (b. 1926)
Bud of Christopher Paul Curtis’ Bud, Not Buddy celebrated his 98th birthday this year from his historically landmarked house in Flint. He was surrounded by musicians, his loving family, and several characters from his traveling days.
Inspired by his childhood run-ins with Lefty Lewis, Bud did wind up working as a labor organizer, and only retired from the Michigan AFT under duress in 2002. But he remains allergic to rest. He’s still heavily involved in the campaign to end the Flint Water Crisis. And recreationally speaking, his front porch remains an open secret among the midwestern jazz cat community. He’s also had his own stool at The Golden Leaf for fifty years.
Meg Murry (b. 1949)
Meg of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time had a weird road, which makes sense given all the worlds she’s stumbled into. Stints as a diagnostic geneticist, death doula, children’s television producer, sound bath giver, and finally a Unitarian priest have conspired to make her the witchiest woman on your block in Salem, Massachusetts—a place with stiff competition.
At 75, Meg stays busy. She has recently completed certifications in Reiki and clinical hypnotherapy. You cannot tell from over the fence if the stuff she’s welding in her backyard is sculpture, or some sort of crude automobile. She has the scariest Halloween decorations of anyone around and a lot of strange visitors at lots of strange hours.
Harriet the Spy (b. 1953)
This year, at 71, the hero of Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy will put the button on a storied career as a professional witness. After being rejected from early admission to the CIA on account of her arguable in-discretion, Harriet dropped out of Bennington College and took her notebook on the road. Throughout the 70s, she ambled the country, collecting stories, characters, and contrarian opinions. On returning to New York as a feted critic, she gained a reputation among the New Journalists for being “spikier than Pauline Kael and Susan Sontag combined.” That’s according to the late Joan Didion, one of her many enemies.
Harriet never settled down, nor quite outgrew the wanderlust. Today she has a ramshackle house off the Hudson line, complete with heirloom tomato garden. She also has a shelf of National Magazine awards, the family’s classic six on East 87th, and a rotating fleet of German Shepherds. The oldest one is always called Ole Golly.
Claudia Kincaid (b. 1956)
Thanks to grandpa Saxonburg and the machinations of her late mentor, Claudia Kincaid of E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler inherited several windfalls before she could legally vote. This led to a terminal case of being a New York City rich kid. Though her planning instincts stayed sharp, Claudia mostly applied her ennui and resources to being a club kid in the 70s and 80s. She fell in with the Haring/Madonna/Basquiat set, photographing the edges of downtown soirees, and helped fund a number of off-the-beaten-path art shows via her trust fund.
She emerged from prolonged adolescence—eventually—with a lot of stories and a lot of logistical know-how. Today she enjoys a curator-at-large post at David Zwirner. She’s still closest with her brother Jamie, and rumor has it she has a wild collection of Italian antiquities at her East Hampton beach house. She’s also on the board of her old house.
Margaret Simon (b. 1959)
Margaret Simon of Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret never got over her fascination with the body’s capabilities. She became a doctor, an ob-gyn, and is ranked as one of the ten best practicing in the tri-state area. She lives in Montclair with her spouse and three kids, and still speaks to her mother on the phone daily. Her empowerment’s also led to a thriving sex life. In clinic off-hours, she and the missus lead a workshop series for long-time couples called “The Religion of Self-Pleasure.”
Esperanza Cordero (b. 1971)
Esperanza of Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street got her wish to leave Chicago. But she also found her way back, via Aunt Lupe’s advice. After spending some time in New York, where she briefly flirted with the dream of security via law degree, the windy city called again. And though it wasn’t exactly fun to play caretaker when her mother fell ill, Esperanza did get to take her to the opera. A forced return to Mango Street also led to new angles on the old stories. Which led to books.
Now a celebrated novelist, Esperanza writes about people who may or may not resemble her own family members from a Lincoln Park brownstone. She’s known for a colorful shawl collection, and is adored by many mentees.
Charlie Kelmeckis (b. 1976)
Charlie of Steven Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower went on to pour his massive heart into art. As a music journalist, his rapt odes to the stomp-clap-hey bands of the earnest early aughts helped vault the likes of Sufjan Stevens to great fame among the fellow sweet sadsacks. And though he left Pittsburgh for the Pacific Northwest—a landscape better befitting his twin thirsts for rapture and gloom—Charlie stayed in touch with a lot of the high-school gang. They get together every year or so to cry and reflect in a parking lot, and take shrooms.
Salamanca Tree Hiddle (b. 1981)
Sal of Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons is still a farmer, still a dreamer, still an empath. In the years since we’ve last seen her, she’s successfully petitioned for enrollment in the Seneca Nation, and has spent the years since her mother’s death learning more about and falling in love with her matrilineal culture. She keeps an open-door policy in the inherited Idaho farmhouse, and has granted over nine hundred travelers seasonal employment on her flower ranch. She wouldn’t call it a cult, exactly. But on the ranch, she cooks massive, messy, faily dinners and nurses hurt wild animals back to life. Be sure to stop in and see her sometime, if you’re ever down and out in Lewiston.
Stanley Yelnats IV (b. 1984)
As a 14 year old victim of the criminal injustice system, Stanley Yelnats of Louis Sachar’s Holes was radicalized early. And though his days in Camp Green Lake were certainly a mixed bag, off the examples off Kissin’ Kate Barlow and Zero he’s committed his life to the twin pursuits of critical fabulation and prison abolition. Today he works at both out of UC-Riverside, in the scholarly shadow of his late mentor, Mike Davis. But his hobby life is robust.
He spends sabbaticals in a retrofitted RV, scouring the deserts of the great West for…something…
Georgia Nicolson (b. 1985)
Georgia of Louise Rennison’s Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging was early to desire and self-expression, but slower to a self-spun self-esteem. At 39, her quest for fulfillment continues. But so do the laughs!
In keeping with another horny British diarist, today’s Georgia works in publishing, at London’s struggling but prestigious Pemberley Press. Though she could see herself making a shift to television production, depending on how this ill-advised affair with the boss pans out. She calls Shoreditch home, and the Ace Gang’s group text is still thriving.
Dimple Lala (b. 1986)
The hero of Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Born Confused is still an ABCD (American Born Confused Desi) and still more content behind the camera. Though these days, she’s swapped her old SLR, Chica Tikka, for a digital lens. In fact, her 30s are all about the glow-up. After Karsh broke her heart freshman year at NYU, she wound up transferring to CalArts, where she fell in with a motley cadre of second-gen artists and the less-judgmental California sunshine.
Today she splits her summers between Jersey and India, and thanks to a few years of post-grad wandering eventually learned enough of her native tongue to speak to Dadaji. She’s currently making a documentary about toxic Western beauty standards, and is happily single.
Image via
